Coke
by Cael Fenton
Summary: “But still that terrible flash arcs...” A RotS AU.
1. Sole Anchor

**Author's note**: Call this an experiment. Random, un-chronological cuts of detention without trial, torture, and the dark night of the Master's soul, a rather confused mixture of political incarceration and the Empire. Basically an AU asking what might have taken place had Obi-Wan fallen to the Dark Side instead of Anakin. Partially inspired by reports of 'interrogation methods' aka torture being taught to elite US and UK troops.

**Disclaimer**: I don't think any of the characters here are actually recognisable, but anyway, I think we all know they belong to LucasFilm.

**COKE**

**Chapter I: Sole Anchor**

_There is darkness._

Only darkness. Only the pressing, choking, stifling black. I strain my eyes. Useless. Nothing. Only darkness. Hesitantly, I close my eyes, open them. There is a little difference. And there is only darkness, a great feeling of nakedness, as though I were alone and defenseless, and the Dark waits beyond the void to consume me.

No, not beyond the void. Closer.

The Darkness breathes in me.

I don't care. Why should I? They told me when they brought me here. There is no way out. There is no escape. Don't try. At first I didn't believe it. But I didn't try, either. Now I know better. I haven't tried to get out, but I _know_.

No way out. Darkness stirs the shreds of my soul.

A mad terror overtakes me. Shaking with fear, I try, try so hard to lift my left hand…Can't…I can't—I don't know which one it is. I can't remember. I don't know. Can't feel. So dark, my sole anchor the neutrality of the floor. No way out.

I close my eyes. It makes little difference, of course, merely a habit I have had for a very long time. When I look…inside…It helps me find—something—not light, nor vain hope, not quite of the omnipresent darkness. A grey-paletted limbo. It is painful, this emptiness. But my fear of the darkness is an old habit, and it is as choking as the Dark is terrible. And this hollowness is all I have to hold on to.

I am lost in the darkness. And in the void, I forget how to feel. There is no way out.

I lift my left hand, clench it tight, into a cool, unyielding fist. Flex it tentatively. Brush my fingers across my naked ribs

…Cold, damp skin…

…cold…

…cold…

…pain…

…_pain_…

Night falls on the closed dark.

Sitting alone, naked, cold. When did I fall asleep? So tired…They never let me sleep. There'll be hell to pay. And no way out.

A noise! A sound, like a blade of grass snapping in a coke breeze. I turn, see a glint of light. Light! I don't know if I should cower in fear or cry for joy, so I half-tilt my face to it. And then it is gone, just like that. Would the light come back?

A muffled hiss, like something heavy locomoting through the dank stale air, and a kind of spreading shock. Dull, sickening thump of bruising flesh. And a high, thin yelp, the sound a small animal in veritable distress would make…my voice, crying out—My voice? My own?—Hand raised, involuntarily clutching my jaw, my fingers drenched with that spurt of warm wetness. Is that the constricting sting of tears?

I miss the second telltale hiss. Feel only a light looseness, like flying through the air, as my cheekbones crunch jarringly. Tepidity flooding my eyes, stinging. Wet hands groping, groping for a way out. But there is no way out. Only in. So I clutch my knees in, trying not to try, searching for numbness, sprawl on the slick bloodiness. There is no way out. My chin clicks sharply on the floor. No fear in this saturated matrix of horror. Dizzy, in the cold vacuum, everything—dark, light, blood, pain—falling away from me. And a voice, _I'll teach you fear._

…_yes_…

_You will fear me. The Dark and the Void and the Light between…all of this, all of this could be yours. Come to hell._

…_Anything_…

And I wake to hell. Sobbing, screaming, crying _no_, and then, too hoarse for words, a linear track of agony. The Darkness eats into the rawness like acid. And after a while, I realize it's gone, it must be gone, it's over. But still that terrible flash arcs, and this emptiness is dulled by the reverberation of pain. No way out.

How can this be truth? The light of truth is my way of life. I have known no other path. But life has become a meaningless abstraction of bareness, broken only by the long shadows of pain. And I wonder, and the reason why I wonder sears with all the unadulterated agony of a knife taking to fragile flesh. There is no way out…_it burns_…

Burning. Burning, burning, burning conflagration. No way out. All twisting to wretched convoluted slag. Falling to white ash, cauterized in the flames. White ash in the bloodied flames. White on red…plunging…down. A scream. Denial, pain, _someone help me!_ Screaming despair. No way out. And then…and then…a solitary rag of raw silk fluttering in the wind. Smoke, death, blood, mingled in the smell of the air. No way out. Hell is raging inside of me. No way out. Break out of the snap-hissing weapon, pound on the machine. No way out. Blue, green, red fire, throwing deep shadows on the face of the man with his mouth moving, whispering something, I can't make out, under the endless repeated screams dividing him and me, _hold on, hold on, just hold on_…A litany, a threat, a prayer, a poem, a promise…of…_blinding bright pain!_…and then his sharp unyielding profile, his eyes closed, prone, lying down, hands folded on his chest. Doesn't account for the harsh violent shapes of orange and dark zigzagging across his skin, like bloody tattoos. Segueing into an ensanguined vision of heated sand and crushed glass—sunset a poisoned potion reducing _all_ to a golden haze, annulling the façade of a thin colourless wedding veil.

_A tree falls in the forest_…Who hears it? Clouds are always white from above, after all. But I below, I cannot escape the rain. It is futile to try; there is no way out. One last scream of impotent grief—one last time, I throw up my hands to shield myself. And after that, it's far too late to retrieve what falls away.


	2. Nanometric Boundaries

**Author's notes**: This story, if it can even labelled as such, seems to be getting out of control. A quick scan through this chapter will confirm that. It's even less narrative than the previous one.

**Disclaimer**: All recognisable characters are property of LucasFilm.

There is a short quote from the Bible, **Genesis 4:10**, in paragraph 7. Please note that, being a Roman Catholic, I have great respect for the Scriptures, and that I afford the Old Testament the special reverence it deserves, so if anyone is offended, has violent objections to this, or is concerned that it shows disrespect, please tell me through a review, or an email, so I can remove the quote ASAP.

**Chapter II: Nanometric Boundaries**

_There is hate._

Or is there? I would give anything to hate him. It is be better that way, but there is no way out. To hate him for what he does, what he did. To hate him for what he didn't. He is many things, and in retrospective, I can hate him, could hate him, could have hated him, even, for all of them. No way out from the little flickers of recognition in his eyes beside the merciless pool of flame that welded us together so long ago. We were perhaps allies not so unwilling, nor so bitter then. Perhaps he did not see all my fervent promises as tortured threats—I would not have thought them empty. In many ways, they still aren't. There is no way out, no escape from all the promises we make…from the cradle to the grave…The cold threat they carried is still potent. He waits to deliver me, wants to give me a way out, though, from what? Myself? I am nothing. I've long since stopped deluding myself into imagining the ten thousand nonexistent shades of gray.

_The macrocosm waits to be discovered within the nanometric boundaries of the microcosm. Indeed._

Indeed? He turns back to say goodbye, a great grief on his face, the cool shadow of his long cloak falling across the burning brightness of his secret love. And he goes alone to fight the darkness, to save the light, to wed his beloved amongst all the overwhelming majesty of the fathomless oceans and the high beauty of the ancient stars and the faraway elevation of the everlasting mountains.

Who's gonna ride your wild horses? The roar of the racetrack is as silence to my ears—I hear only his voice. Far away, high up, far away, shining bright on the walls of the ivory tower from the dark yellow banks of trailing cloud, is the sun. I heed not its pallid light. All is obscured by the golden dust kicked up on the racecourse. Swirls, storms of dust. Everywhere. No way out, no escape from the dust. No way out. Everywhere. In my hair, my mouth—sanding smooth the inside of my throat—my eyes. Vicious dust in my eyes, blinding and biting and painful. Until I am dazzled by the reflection of the suns' fiery light off the dust everywhere. Breathing dust, choking dust. Everywhere. No way out. Until I am dizzied and dazzled by the fiery sunlight reflected off the dust.

Dust. It lies thickly, the dust, on his clothes and his hair and his mouth, so that when he spoke, little grey-white flakes descend softly onto my shoulders. No way out. Dust, the little, little, soft, little pieces of shade that are on him, on every fibre and cell and subatomic particle of him that was hot and bright with hatred. It is many things, but above all it is discreet. Quiet, quiet. It screams not, sparking in the curve of the moon. The pearly sheen of it gleams dully on his hands, with nary an imagined sigh, almost invisible. And one sees it only in the golden grainy light of the suns, the dust motes, sparking and shining and arcing one after the other, like ripples spreading on a pond. Circles, moving. Circles, swirling around, around, around. But silent. Dust is silent.

Not like blood. The blood cries out, _no way out_. No way out. _Then the LORD said, your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground, like a voice calling for revenge_. No way out. Blood is not silent. It speaks for the victim and the altar and the holy priest. And it is deeply red. Dark flows its colour, though it runs quick and thin as clear water. So if you thrust your arms elbow-deep into a basin of blood, they would come out streaming blood. The redness of it, on one's fingers and nestling in the hollows of the wristbones. No way out.

Blood on your hands. No way out. All wet and slippery. Blood could not cloak injury. It would fall away, slip between the hands like fine sand or seawater. And then you were left there with the deep burning wound, throbbing and thrumming and pulsing with deep painful emotion, because there is no way out. I'm sorry? What do I know, I, I, pontificating on pain? What do I know? I know nothing. I do not know life—it is a gift, they say—or death's all-'whelming sting. What do I know? Not even hatred for my lover. Love or pain at the sight of blood vivid on his tender legs. Dripping away, dripping from the wounds that mar his body beautiful. Blood, wet on my hands and on my face, bitter on the back of my tongue and the roof of my mouth. No way out. Falling to my knees, kneeling or crouching…low…the night wind at my back, the fire before me. Faraway, so close. So I can feel the shining orange sparks arcing onto my face, turning little bits of me to miniscule curls of smoke in the evanescent hours between sundown and sunup.

I kneel before the fire, and in the orange depths of flame I see the wild horses tearing round the racetrack, eyes wide so the whites show like leftover porridge in a bowl, nostrils red, flared. Round again, round again, hair matted where their riders strike them, solitary drops of blood dashing forth, grim heralds of their passing, as the fleet wind of their speed stirs the dust in their wake. They should hate their masters. They should hate with a burning, bitter, driven passion. They cannot. There is only the sharp burst of adrenaline, the ears-back, hooves a-flying, legs-out fight, the final inertia of the spirit, the last rebellion, because it is not given to them to gracefully lay down arms.


	3. Winter's Frost

**Author's notes**: The very last sentence of this chapter is an ecclesiastical phrase that means **this is my body** in Latin.

**Disclaimer**: All recognisable characters are property of LucasFilm.

**Chapter III: Winter's Frost**

_There is chaos._

I never believed in good chaos. I would have none of it, but there is no way out. It would be better to have naught, to have nothing at all, than to know this delirium of clarity, this conscious deadness, living cancer. All the waking dreams of a crippled angel, like the skittering pulse of the one-armed beggar who suddenly discovers that he is perfectly healthy and able-bodied.

_Beggars can't be choosers. A rose by any other name_…

But, love, there is no way out. No way back to the one love. For it is love. It is really that simple. As simple, as profound, as a single leaf, they once told me, though they were not speaking of love…Like a rose waiting out the storm. Like a rose, dead, dried, yet preserved in all her prideful, thorny glory of a rush of frail bloody petals that carry the scent that is more potent than the smell of blood and death. No way out, pervading every corner of the windowed room. Waiting out the storm, the rose behind her glass window, and the smell that lingers, that speaks of our painful, entangled love. No way out. It is dead—it has died ten thousand deaths that each welcomed with gladness the slow creep of winter's frost—the same frost moving upon the water-reeds. No way out. Aloft in the dizzying sensation of wine-dark petals like frozen stills of the ones that were not borrowed or stolen. Dark, wrinkled, old, dead. He smiles, teeth showing, white-bright. Bitter the taste in my mouth as I look on him. And 'It's still sharp,' he breathes. Perched precariously atop that dream of marionette elegance, like the obscenely obscure length of a ancient, forgotten blade.

Who bears the scent of the dead rose flower? Why does it hang forever in the air, haunting the fragile, heartbreakingly beautiful corpse? And sunlight pours through the window from behind the dull yellow clouds, on the bright raindrops clinging to the window; slipping, sliding down the clear cut glass smooth as silk, smooth as a rose petal. Love, the rain slid down glass that was smooth as a rose petal. No way out. The rain drops slid down. They can't hold on. They can't hold it. They can't hold…they can't grasp it. they can't understand. No way out. I watch them, sitting not far from where the rose stands, leaning a little toward the window in death, in her cut-crystal vase of part hard glass and part reflected shards of sunlight's prism. No way out.

And still the rose waits , hearing the gasp of the after-storm rainwater dashing hard upon the window and trickling slow down—defeated. Hears the crystalline tinkle as, every morning, the lover breaks the phial to release the sweet young perfume. No way out. Neither death nor pain, dearly beloved, shall drain the heady, intoxicating wine of blood from the rose flower—none shall dull her weapons or detract from her height. She stands unmoving—the ghosts of New Year resolutions breathing sickly decay down her slender neck, she has no way out—before the glass window. Glass, so they say, is not a solid material, but a supercooled liquid, such that it can retain its shape for a goodly number of years. But if it stood untouched for half a century, the lower portion would be visibly thicker than the upper. The glass, clear and shining, you have to think of it, sliding down, flowing. All goes down. No way out.

Look through the glass window, my rose. There is no way out. The rain drizzles on. No way out. Endless rain, and at night, the stars are dim. Do you see clearly now? do you see clearly now! Love the wooden shield of the ancient fairytale warriors, love the fiery dragon with green and silver scales…to look upon the eyes of the fiery dragon is death. Their gaze is terror; they shine like stars in the sky; they wing on through the rain. Flying away…but we have no wings, and I fly the base airs of heaven for a little while. There is no way out.

_Tell me your dreams, my apprentice._

Starvation is death. There is no way out.

Contrary to popular belief, hunger is not an emptiness, a lack, a Void. It is rather a Presence, a monster growing and bubbling in the veins and crawling up the throat and spilling from the mouth like vomit, oozing from all the orifices like the maggots that bloat up a dead thing.

Starvation is death. There is no way out.

If death is like God, who knows the ways of heaven? Not all the martyrs and saints, nor the angels, not even those with broken wings. They watch over all the worlds of this universe, the angels. They are very beautiful. Their faces shine like the sun—their glory can never be reconciled to brief, bitter mortality. And just perhaps, they smell of roses.

Mortality. Some die for love. What courage they must possess, to willingly take it into their arms, to embrace death, to fall with naked purpose into the burning valley between her legs. There is no way out. She is merciless. There is no way out. And then love lays them conquered in a dark coffin, no way out, and the scent of dried roses…Perhaps it is for these that the rose wilts, waiting. It is humbling, the suffering that men voluntarily take upon their bodies in the name of hate, or despair, or love.

_Hoc est enim corpus meum._


	4. A Sort Of Postscript

**Author's notes**: It's actually finished at last!

I had a lot of difficulty with the last chapter, because as I was writing it, it suddenly dawned upon me that this story was getting out of hand, turning autobiographical, and supremely over-the-top. So I had to ask myself if I really wanted it that way. The answer is up to you, my readers, as I'm not too sure myself.

Anyway, this last chapter is not a chapter proper as such, but more of a reflection on what this collection of randomly and loosely connected vignettes means to me, and how it continues to resound in my life. This baby has been with me, or in my head, at least, for more than a year now. I don't think I'll ever be able to get it out. So here it is, my parting shot, the final sip of **Coke**, or the final snort of crack, if you like, a sort of **Postcript**.

**Postscript**

The sun came up one morning and looked upon the rose, and where the two met, the sun became as water upon her petals, and the rose opened into fullness when the sun stifled her in his glory. But when into darkness fell our star, the rose waited in silence, waited in silence for the word; waited in pain, waited for the miracle; waited in death, in death for love; waited by the glass window, waiting for light; the rose waited in darkness, the rose waited in darkness for the dawn.


End file.
